


Broken Pieces

by Tattered_Dreams



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5x09, Bromance, Death, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Lies of Omission, Murder, Sciles, Self Defence, Smart Scott, Stydia, Theo is an asshole and a liar and I don't like him, Violence, just a hint towards the end, just wanted to fix the episode, maybe? - Freeform, really not aimed at any ships, what if, you can just see it as friendship if you prefer, you can read into it further if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 02:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4648371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/pseuds/Tattered_Dreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shot ‘fix it’ type fic (because I was emotionally distressed). After what happened outside the Clinic, Stiles finds himself back home, feeling like he’s lost everything. He’s not expecting a knock at the door. He’s definitely not expecting it to be Scott.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I’ve written for this universe and these characters. I apologise if either of them feel off and I always appreciate feedback.
> 
> This does assume Scott is a little smarter than he’s sometimes portrayed as. That’s deliberate and I realise that this is mildly AU due to that. Just one of the many ideas I had to make last week’s episode better. I'd hoped to post it before 5x10 aired, but that's life.
> 
> There are no real ships here. Its primarily a sciles friendship focus, but you could read more into it if you wanted, and you could read a touch of Stydia towards the end, but you can read that purely as friendship, too.

Stiles doesn’t fully remember coming home.

He remembers the clinic, the parking lot, the wrench and the emptiness. Then he remembers a guttering engine, streetlights and choking silence at war with the screaming in his head.

Then he remembers sitting on the edge of his bed, soaking his sheets.

He doesn’t remember deciding to come here, or how long it took him to manage it. He doesn’t remember what happened to the wrench. He doesn’t remember what happened to his keys. He doesn’t remember climbing the stairs.

Stiles is still lost inside his own head, drowning with his own demons, when there’s a knock on the door of the Stilinski house at nine minutes past two in the morning.

(That’s if the glowing lights on the digital clock are to be believed. Stiles isn’t sure what he believes anymore).

He doesn’t even register the first knock. He doesn’t hear it over the echoing clang and clatter of falling scaffolding that plays in his memory every time he closes his eyes.

Donovan is dead. He killed him. Scott knows.

_You killed Donovan?_

The second knock feels too loud; hammering into his ears. It startles him.

Stiles looks shakily up, towards his window even though he can’t see anything through it without moving.

He wasn’t expecting anyone.

His dad left a message on the voicemail, saying he was pulling the graveyard shift; Stiles hasn’t been able to contact Lydia or Malia for hours and the others…the others are with Scott.

No one should be here.

He has no pack.

_We can’t kill the people we’re trying to save!_

But the knock comes again, repeated thumps that resound through the house despite the noise of the rain. Stiles can’t smell emotions, or a person’s unique scent, but he feels like the knocking is fuelled with some kind of desperation anyway.

And even if he’s the only person who still thinks his gut instincts are right, he’s lost too much of himself over the past few days to lose any more.

(Because isn’t this just it? Even if Scott has walked away from him, Stiles just doesn’t know how to turn his back on Scott).

So he stands up.

The floor seems to tilt. His shoulder throbs; more painful than it should still feel for a flesh wound that’s half-healed. He’s shivering uncontrollably. Some of it is the cold – he’s still wearing his soaked hoodie and jeans which have let a chill set right into his bones – but the rest of it is the fragments of his mind.

It’s almost like he can see them; memories, friendships and hardships that look like blood-stained shards of glass, trembling on the shiny floor of a vast white room like they can quake themselves back together.

But that’s not how it works.

He feels physically sick.

He’s back to absently counting his fingers again as he stumbles into the upstairs hall and down the stairs. He feels like he can’t grip anything – like he’s not even really there anymore; just a ghost moving through a once familiar space. And yet the smooth banister rail bites into his palm with how hard he grasps it.

If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be upright anymore.

Somehow he’s been holding himself together at the seams for days – ever since the night in the Library, but now that it’s all come out, he’s fallen apart. Working with the Pack; helping, finding answers, it kept him sane, kept him moving forward; even deceived him into thinking he could learn to forgive himself.

But now that’s gone.

Scott walked away and Stiles felt himself crumble, like he’d only been holding together bits that were already broken.

He hesitates in the hall.

The rain beats hard and violent against the house. Too loud. Too angry. The world spins; the walls and coat hooks drift. The front door seems to shrink away from him, a distance twice as long as it should be.

Is he losing his mind, or has that already gone a long time ago?

There’s another knock – four, actually – more like a pounding. A fist against the door rather than knuckles. Definitely desperate.

And Stiles manages to cross the space.

He pulls back the chain and hauls open the door onto the storm.

He doesn’t care who’s standing there. He’s already in hell; already living his worst fear. Whoever it is, this doesn’t get worse.

(He should know better than to think these things by now, really. It can always get worse).

But it’s Scott standing on the doorstep.

Stiles recoils back in an involuntary move. Scott made it clear; he was out, he had to leave, he wasn’t welcome. If he’s here, it’s because he needs something or because he still has more to say.

And Stiles is done.

He’s not mentally stable enough to go through that with his best friend. Not again.

But before he can say anything, Scott steps over the threshold and then Stiles is being grasped in a tight, trembling hug.

His breath swoops out so fast he feels dizzy and he nearly sways to the floor, but Scott keeps him standing. Stiles can’t bring himself to return it; his hands stay down; fixed, shellshocked and terrified.

Scott’s hugging him like a brother. Like that day in the hospital, like the time his mom died, like the day his dad left town.

It takes nearly a full twenty seconds for Stiles to even process it. The shock feels like trying to interpret the world through jello –his senses are muffled and distorted and there’s a constricting pressure around his lungs.

So it takes him a while to realise that Scott is shaking almost as hard as he’s hugging him, and he can feel his best friend’s tears dropping onto his shoulder; scalding hot burst against the chill of his skin.

“Stiles, I’m so sorry,” Scott says, his voice cracked and barely a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Stiles…I believe you. I always did.”

And Stiles _breaks_.

He didn’t think he had any left, but his breath rushes out all over again, catching on a sob in the back of his throat. His eyes burn and flood, his vision swims as his own tears trace paths down his face.

And then, to stop them both tumbling to the floor, he lets himself grip Scott back.

It’s almost nice to feel that he can’t breathe because he physically can’t breathe, rather than just dealing with the emotional struggle. But before he really can pass out (how he hasn’t already so far he really doesn’t know), Scott pulls back.

Stiles retracts his own grip like he’s been scorched. Terror flashes through him like being shot; a rush of painful heat that then stays, lodged, between your ribs where it can deliver reminding pulses of imminent suffering with every movement he makes.

Because something between them is broken.

But maybe this is at least even (and it’s a bitter thought).

Scott flinched away from him just hours ago, eyes darting to the wrench in his hand. There was no disguising the fear in his face then. Stiles can’t begrudge him that fear; there was another night, not so long ago, outside the clinic, in the rain, when a fox used Stiles hands to twist a sword into his best friend; used his face and his voice to taunt him as he did. And Stiles can’t help flinching now – because a hug doesn’t fix what’s shattered between them.

But Scott’s hands come to rest on his shoulders, pressing lightly as he raises his dark eyes to meet Stiles own amber ones.

“I’m so sorry,” he croaks again; throat raw. “Stiles, I believed you.”

And now Stiles fully processes what Scott is saying. And something cold slides down his spine; something he hates himself for. Bitterness. Betrayal.

“Then…why?” his voice doesn’t even work; it scratches up his throat and comes out a dry scraping sound.

Scott shakes his head, drops it. Water drips from his flattened hair onto the floorboards between them as he says to Stiles’ collarbone, “Because of Theo.”

Stiles freezes under his friends’ grip.

That’s it, then, isn’t it? He believes him; believes he had to do it, but he’s lost him anyway.

But – no. Wait.

He knows Scott better than that. Scott could forgive Allison for turning on them, for shooting Erica and Boyd. He forgave Decaulion enough to let him walk free. So it’s something else.

And then his brain catches up.

“What do you mean, ‘Theo’?”

“I mean Theo was inside,” Scott says. There’s a hassled note in his voice and he starts talking faster. “He was in the clinic earlier, and he could hear us. He’d have been listening to everything so I had to-…I had to. If he knew…Stiles- I’m sorry. I never…”

Stiles is gripping his friend’s shoulder in return before he’s consciously thought about it. Even without saying anything, the gesture seems to give Scott strength.

His eyes finally lift back to Stiles’ own. He squeezes his hands on Stiles’ shoulders in a reciprocation.

Stiles can’t bite back the gasp of pain in time.

He flinches out from under the touch, curling forwards into himself as his hand breaks away from Scott and reaches to clutch at his shoulder helplessly. Breathing hard through his nose, he braces himself against the pulses of pain as they slowly die away. Its only when it’s dulled back to a persistent ache – something he’s learned to live with – that he realises he’s crumpled on the floor.

Scott’s eyes widen, swimming with concern and fear – anger, too.

“What happened, Stiles?” His voice is quieter, gentler than Stiles expected. Scott crouches in front of him. After a beat of hesitation, Scott places a hand back on his uninjured shoulder.

He feels the ache start to lift; feels the trembling in his muscles and mind start to quieten before he sees the black veins rising on Scott’s hand, disappearing into his sleeve.

“Don’t,” Stiles whispers.

Scott shakes his head. “Whatever happened, it was self defence,” he says. “And whatever you think, you don’t deserve to feel this pain for it. You don’t need to punish yourself for it.”

Stiles doesn’t bother to bite back his tears.

“Yeah, I do,” he mutters. His fingers rub mindlessly at the rise of his shoulder, the edge of where he knows the wound is, even if there’s no longer any pain or even a dull twinge coming from it. He’s forgotten what that felt like. “I messed up, Scott.”

He looks up. “I should have told you. I couldn’t; I was too afraid, it was too…”

“Hey,” Scott says, just a hint of his Alpha voice in the word. “I messed up, too, okay? I should have seen you weren’t okay. I should have been there for you. We’ve all been…off since this started. And I’m so sorry I had to make you think I-“ his throat closes up.

And Stiles frowns, mind treading back to something he said earlier.

(He’s not processing everything as easily or as quickly as usual. Even if Scott’s here, it feels like he’s still working with fragments of who he used to be).

“Wait,” he says, and his back straightens. He uncurls himself from his shoulder. “You said ‘whatever happened’ – but you…outside the clinic – you said ‘the way it happened’. You said ‘the way it happened’ like you knew – like you knew about the scaffolding and you couldn’t- you couldn’t forgive me for it.”

Scott’s brow furrows and genuine confusion flares in his eyes.

“Scaffolding?”

Stiles’ world caves in.

Scott doesn’t know what happened. Not really. But that almost means something worse. He knows about Donovan; he knows Stiles is responsible.

Which means someone told him another story.

“Who told you about Donovan?” Stiles voice is almost too quiet for his own ears to pick up.

He already knows the answer.

But Scott – expression hardening – answers anyway.

“Theo.”

It’s a curious sensation – to feel your current self just want to collapse and give up, whilst at the same time, a part of you that feels like your old self (a hyperactive kid with a buzz cut and barely a handful of social skills who’s somehow survived inside this long) wants to punch the air and yell ‘I told you so! Didn’t I tell you so?’

Stiles settles for letting out a huff of air that is a humourless, bitter laugh.

And then he remembers the wrench. He remembers the way Scott produced it from his jacket like it was an ace card; a condemning piece of evidence.

Dread fills his stomach.

“What did he tell you I did?”

From the look on Scott’s face, he’s remembering the wrench, too.

“Donovan attacked you at the school. You were in the library,” Scott’s voice is numb and flat – like he’s having to distance himself from the story in order to tell it. With each word, Stiles feels colder. “You managed to catch him. He went down and then…you kept going.”

The nausea twists like a knot in Stiles’ stomach and his mind flashes with blood and mercury and scaffolding.

Scott’s voice is less level now as he finishes, “He said you were scared, terrified for your dad – that Donovan said he was going after him – and that you were angry. He said you stopped when Donovan’s skull-“

And that’s where Scott stops talking again.

He doesn’t need to finish – the implication is all too real.

He stopped when Donovan’s skull caved in.

The urge to be physically sick is back; a lurching sensation up his stomach and into his throat. His insides tighten and contort. His mind rips apart his memories, turns scaffolding into wrenches.

Stiles twists violently on the floor, away from Scott’s hand on his shoulder and throws himself forward. But he doesn’t heave.

The sickness passes, leaving him shaking again.

“I knew you couldn’t have done it,” Scott says quietly, talking even though Stiles can’t make himself look up from the floor. “I mean, there wasn’t enough blood on the wrench for that, but I knew anyway. I knew you couldn’t. And that’s when I started thinking that…Theo told me for a reason. All this time, he’s just been trying to help and he’s always seemed so…genuine.”

“Sociopaths often do,” Stiles mutters, finally pulling himself upright.

He feels clammy and dizzy in his soaked clothes, but like before, having some mystery, some bad guy to figure out gives him purpose. He feels more human – more Stiles – than he has in hours.

Scott nods once. “And look, if he’s been playing us all up to now, it’s for something big. I don’t know what, but I thought if I outed him, it would all go wrong.”

“So you had to make him think it was all going to plan,” Stiles finishes.

He doesn’t have to ask how Scott guessed that Stiles being turned away was part of Theo’s plan. He’s made it no secret that he doesn’t like or trust Theo, and the asshole has been tagging himself along for long enough to know where Scott’s moral compass is turned.

So he told the perfect lie. He played on Scott’s own sense of right and wrong with a story he knew the Alpha couldn’t justify or forgive. And he knew Stiles hadn’t been able to tell anyone, so no one knew the truth anyway.

He just made one mistake.

He underestimated Scott.

(Their enemies have done it before).

Scott may not be Lydia-smart (no one is), and he may rely on Stiles to puzzle things out and come up with the plan, but he’s never been stupid. And even if they’ve all been drifting lately, keeping secrets and losing themselves, that doesn’t erase a lifetime of friendship.

Theo carefully manipulated Scott into place for this major play, so this lie would root itself as he needed, but he underestimated that friendship.

(For a moment there – a few hours, actually – so did Stiles).

Stiles slumps against the wall, drawing his knees up and resting his wrists on them.

Scott lets out a shaky, weary breath and turns against the wall, too.

The ticking of the hall clock drums loud into the sudden, exhausting silence.

Stiles lets himself wonder for a second just how it could have gone if Scott did believe Theo. He gets a flash of an alternate future; one where he feels like a shadow of himself, where Scott can never look him in the eyes again, where the pack falls apart and Theo is left standing.

“I’m so sorry,” Scott says again.

Stiles knows why. Scott said everything he did knowing it was as a ruse; staging it. But Stiles lived that moment like it was real; like he’d lost everything.

“I get it,” Stiles says. He does. He can’t bring himself to say its okay, or he forgives him. He will, eventually, but right now this is all he can give.

And then, because it’s still haunting him. “I’m sorry I lifted the wrench at you.”

He didn’t even think about it. Desperation seeping into his bloodstream like ice water, he’d felt his grip tightening (anything that was there to grasp to) without processing how it might come across.

“It’s okay,” Scott murmurs. “I’m sorry I flinched.”

He knows it wasn’t him that twisted that sword into his best friend, but he carries the weight of it anyway.

“Don’t be.”

The clock ticks. The rain drowns out all other noise and they sit against the wall, the coats brushing their heads for several long moments before Stiles realises he’s shivering again.

“You need to get changed,” Scott says. “You’ll catch pneumonia.”

“Yeah,” Stiles responds. He doesn’t move.

“I’m sorry I ever believed him,” Scott continues. Stiles doesn’t need to ask who he means. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you at the start. I’m sorry it took so long to show up here.”

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah; had to give Theo the slip.”

Scott’s drawn expression tells him this is completely the truth. He couldn’t be followed.

Stiles sighs again. “It’s not all your fault, Scott. I mean, yeah, you should have listened to me, but in fairness, he’s damn good at this. He came here for this and he played on all our weaknesses. And I’m sorry, too, you know – I never should have said that stuff about you being a True Alpha and not messing up and…”

His voice dies away.

More moments pass. The clock ticks quietly but the storm never lets up. There is the faint whooshing sound of a car driving down the street outside, spraying the puddles into the air as it goes.

“Did you-“

“I ran,” Scott says.

No bike outside, then. No hint that Scott’s even here, just in case Theo does decide to drive past. They have to be careful now; no one can know that Scott suspects.

(Everyone knows Stiles does).

“Can I see it?” Scott asks.

Stiles bites his tongue, hesitates, and then leans off the wall. Scott turns to him as he peels back the neck of his hoodie and shirt to expose the wound.

Scott’s eyes widen and his jaw goes slack. He leans over further.

The bite is on that annoying part of his shoulder where he can just about reach it and just about see it, but can’t quite do either properly. But he’s seen it in the mirror and he knows what it looks like.

It’s an almost intricate seeming rosette of a mark, the teeth in a formation of circles with the worst of it in the centre where the flesh was ripped away.

It looks better now than it did then. He’s healing, and that, at least, is something he’s thankful for.

But for Scott, this horror is all new.

Apparently Theo didn’t mention anything about Donovan’s new dentistry.

“Stiles, wha…what did this?”

But after everything he’s dealt with today, this feels like one of the easiest questions to answer.

“Donovan,” he supplies. “He did attack me at the school.”

Scott’s eyes move up from the injury so he can look straight at him. Stiles covers the bite again.

Okay.

So they’re doing this.

“Jeep wouldn’t start,” Stiles begins, once more leaning into the wall. “I was working on it in the parking lot and out of nowhere, this burning pain in my shoulder just starts up. I managed to break loose, grab his arm and I’m not even kidding – there was a mouth on the palm of his hand, Scott.”

Scott’s expression sits somewhere between riveted and repulsed with a side order of horrified.

Stiles drops his head, starts talking to the floorboards. “It was this…this ugly thing. Round, lined with teeth like the wendigo and they were moving, reaching out…I don’t know exactly what happened; we fought and he was choking me…I managed to reach the wrench and I – Scott, I hit him.”

He chokes on a sob and swallows hastily, “Just once, I swear. It knocked him back and there was blood and I just ran. I knew you needed keycard access to the library, so I headed there and I hid. But he got in – I don’t know how. He was saying all this stuff about my dad…said it was my dad’s fault that his dad…said he was going to make him suffer and he was going to use me to do it. Then he was going to go after him anyway. I don’t remember it all. I just… I remember being scared and being angry.

“I thought I was going to die there. I was going to die, and he’d go after my dad and I couldn’t even warn him…

“He snuck up on me. We knocked over a whole line of shelves and I lost the wrench. I might have blacked out for a second. I was just- just trying to get away. And I climbed the scaffolding-“ Stiles is distantly aware that he’s almost hyperventilating at this point. He can’t see the floorboards anymore; his house has been replaced with the very solid image of the shadowed library, moonlight pouring through the window. There’s the dust sheets laid across the floor with the toppled books and fallen poles.

He can still see the vacant look in Donovan’s eyes; see the mercury collecting around the pole in his chest.

“Stiles?” Scott prompts gently.

He draws in a sharp breath which bursts painfully in his head. The scene in the library dissolves. He’s left staring at a wet boot print and wondering if it’s his or Scott’s.

“I climbed up and he chased me. He said he was going to eat my legs. He had a hold of me; I couldn’t get any higher, so I reached for the pin. I thought if I brought it down, at least he’d let go, and I could run…But it almost took me down with it, and when I looked back…

“It was sticking through his chest like it was right out of some stupid horror flick. And he was just…there was all this blood and mercury and he was still looking at me like he still wanted to strangle me.”

“Stiles,” Scott says slowly next to him. “That…that wasn’t even self defence. It was an accident. Just an accident.”

Stiles looks over at him, eyes wide.

Scott gazes back.

“For a second,” Stiles whispers. “I felt relieved. I watched his eyes go blank. It was my fault, Scott, but I was glad he was dead.”

“You’re right, okay?” Scott says, just as quiet. “I want to save everyone and I don’t want people to die. But he was going to kill you, Stiles. _He would have_. And I can’t be upset about it because I’d rather he was dead than you.”

Tears spill over his cheeks again, and he nods once, a stilted movement.

The silence comes back. The clock fills the space again.

But there’s a lightness in Stiles’ chest that he hasn’t felt for days – maybe weeks. For the first time since it happened, he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning.

It took all this before he could begin to forgive himself.

Finally, Scott sighs.

“You need to get changed, Man.”

It feels like something he would have said before everything started and it’s that that forces Stiles to his feet.

“You gotta go,” Stiles says to him, as Scott stands, too.

Scott can’t be caught here, not by anyone.

The Alpha nods. “Yeah. We’ve got to watch our backs until we know his plan.”

“The others shouldn’t know.”

The words are painful to say, biting into him, but this is important. Stiles rarely extends his trust to anyone, but even if he has learned to trust the Pack, none of them are what they used to be.

He has no idea how far into their minds Theo has dug. It’s just not safe.

Scott swallows hard; nods once.

“They were there, earlier. Liam…he probably wasn’t listening – Hayden was attacked and-“

“Whoa, wait – what?”

Stiles hasn’t heard this.

So instead, they both stagger back up the stairs to Stiles’ room and Scott relays everything he missed.

Corey was killed at the hospital. (He knows a girl was killed at school already). Hayden was injected with mercury, her condition is unstable and unknown and she’s been taken to hospital. Liam is furious because Scott refused to give her the bite.

(Honestly, Stiles is a little relieved. Who knows what could happen to a chimera if they’re actually, really bitten? And that’s even if it works and doesn’t kill her first).

(But he just nods and claps Scott on the shoulder).

(Stiles is pretty sure Scott has his own reasons for refusing).

Liam and Theo have been put on guard duty at the hospital. Scott escaped by saying he had to find Malia and Lydia – neither of whom had shown up at the clinic.

Stiles peels off his wet hoodie – it’s actually been on him so long it’s just starting to dry out – and drapes it over the doorhandle.

Scott sinks down onto the foot of his bed.

“I finally got through to Malia as I was heading over. She asked where everyone was waiting so I told her to go to the hospital.”

“And Lydia?”

Stiles feels a spike of apprehension lodge itself between his ribs as he digs for fresh clothing in his drawers. He hasn’t heard from her since the morning and he knows she was planning to drag Parrish out to the Preserve.

With two dead chimeras, he’s thinking its only a matter of time before something goes wrong.

He doesn’t want Lydia caught in the crossfire.

But Scott shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m going to keep trying. I’ll find her. But Stiles…”

“No,” he shakes his head, refusing, even though it hurts him to do it. “If Theo thinks it hasn’t worked, he could be a danger to any of us. Tell her the same thing. The whole pack thinks I- I did it, and it needs to stay that way.”

Scott nods back, jaw fixed like he’s already bracing himself for another lie.

That’s all they’ve been doing to each other lately. Lying.

But this feels different. This isn’t Liam – a new Beta who they’re trying to protect. This is Lydia, who’s been with them from the beginning, back when it was four of them. They already lost Allison. Lying to Lydia feels…real. Final.

“She won’t believe it,” Scott says. “And what do I do then?”

Stiles closes his eyes tightly, trying to find some balance inside him because – damn it – Scott’s probably right. If Scott could work out Theo was lying, and hazard a good guess at why, Lydia will piece it together in the time it takes Scott to reel off the story.

And then she’ll be pissed that they tried to keep it from her.

“Then,” he says, and his voice cracks, because if that’s true, Theo could be coming for her. “Then you keep her safe.”

Scott stands. Stiles turns to him, tossing his clean clothing onto his desk.

“I will. I know things are screwed up and so much has gone wrong and people have died, but, Stiles – I’ll keep her safe.”

Stiles reaches out, grasps him and they pull into another hug.

“I know,” Stiles says over his friend’s shoulder. “I know.”

He figures, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he should be worried about Malia – about her knowing the truth and being in danger for it. But it’s just not there.

Malia hasn’t known him as long, and having spent nearly a decade as a coyote, she has a very different concept of survival. At least, she used to. She might be willing to believe Stiles could murder Donovan. At least that keeps her safe for now. But in any case, she can take care of herself in a way Lydia can’t (not that he’d ever tell Lydia that), and the still fundamental truth of Stiles’ existence is that he’s always, always put Lydia before everything else.

But right now, he can’t protect her.

He pulls back and Scott nods again – a simple promise without words. Then he’s moving away, pushing open the window and disappearing into the storm.

Stiles let’s out a breath that feels like it empties his lungs.

His shoulder is only now beginning to twinge again. Before it sets in, he strips his damp shirt off over his head and dumps it on the laundry pile by the door.

The smell of rain, woods and engine fuel is heavy in the air, clinging into his clothes and on his skin.

Absently, Stiles wonders if Scott could smell his guilt and his fear, too.

And it’s that thought which has him lurching for his phone and tapping out a text.

To: Scotty  
_Delete this. Get a shower before you see any of the pack, as soon as you can. They’ll smell me on you. And only drop by when it’s raining until things change._

The rain will wash away traces of Scott on the house, and Stiles has no intention of letting Theo inside.

His phone beeps before he’s finished scooping up his clean clothes and he dives for it again.

From: Scotty  
_Already on it – headed home first. Mom doesn’t know anything about Donovan. I’ll find Lydia tonight._

Stiles deletes Scott’s text, and erases his own from his send messages folder before turning, finally for the bathroom.

The chill starts to seep away under the spray – which feels scalding on his skin for at least ten minutes before he returns to a somewhat normal temperature. His muscles loosen and relax as he scrubs away all traces of the night.

Finally, bundled up in a dry hoodie and flannel pyjama pants, he falls into bed. The numbers on the clock tell him that nearly two full hours have gone by. His dad will be home soon.

There’s a whole lot left to go. He has to keep up this ruse, let his friends believe him a killer, not talk to Scott unless they’re careful, and they still have to work out the Dread Doctors’ plans and how Theo ties in.

But he feels like himself again. And he hasn’t lost everything; not yet.

Its that thought that allows him to finally find sleep.


End file.
